A sale of both Volt Bank and Collection House is believed to be heating up, with buyers, including ANZ, circling at least one of the businesses.
Voluntary administrators for Collection House are sending out a flyer document for the sale that will land on the desks of prospective buyers as early as Wednesday.
DataRoom has learned from sources in the market that there is a party that has strong interest in either recapitalising or buying the business that has been in talks with either administrators or lenders.
Credit Corp is known to be interested, but is not thought to be in the box seat as a suitor at this stage.
The company had an investment of about $8m in Volt Bank and its collapse came in the same week that the neobank Volt was closing its doors.
DataRoom understands that ANZ has held recent talks about buying Volt Bank to gain its technology at a time it lags behind its peers in technology investment.
Yet whether the bank remains an interested buyer of Volt remains unclear.
Volt had been looking to raise new funds and had maintained that all was tracking well before its closure.
Collection House collapsed into administration on June 29 and is now in the hands of FTI Consulting’s John Park, Ben Campbell and Kelly-Anne Trenfield.
The listed company had a $6m funding facility that was secured against its Volt Bank investment.
The debt collector has key clients such as Telstra and Westpac.
The business is likely to be attractive to a buyer keen to capitalise on the increasing need for debt collection services heading into a downturn as more companies and consumers default on debt payments.
Collection House said last week that the decision to place the business into voluntary administration came after exhaustive attempts to embark on a restructure and raise funds.
Private equity has invested in the credit collection space before.
The Carlyle Group weighed a deal to buy Pioneer Credit before the pandemic and remained a lender, while Panthera Finance has counted CPE as a financial backer.
Yet market experts believe that Collection House is most suited to a strategic buyer where it can incorporate its assets into its business.
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